(It's family)nobody gets left behind
by Thetimeinbetween
Summary: "...You're gonna be fine. This is not gonna kill you and you know that. You'll be ok". -Sometimes it's harder to accept things than it seems. Red is willing to help Piper with it. Set right after 4x08: "Friends in low places".


It was by then the heart of the night and Red had no way to go back to sleep when she couldn't. Piper's bunk was empty. She couldn't have fooled anybody,she was worried about the child. The events which had occurred a couple of hours before had the older woman still on edge. She had seen the girl struggling a lot of times,but nothing had ever broken her like this. She was aware of it being almost time to go and get breakfast ready at the crack of dawn,and went for the bathroom before CO Piscatella came looking for her. It was eerily quiet and didn't sit right with her. It was the typical dread assaulting her when she knew one of her kids was in deep trouble,or was hiding something from her. She always knew. Always .

"Oh dear child"

The sight in front of her was the most disheartening she could've imagined,as Piper looked up at her like a deer caught in headlights,still holding the sharp object in her hands,which clattered to the floor and onto the blood coating the tiles.

For once she found herself totally speechless and almost at loss of what to do. The child had been a bit too alright with what had happened. But she should've known. She should always know better. Years of taking care of her family had taught her that and it burnt,knowing she had had to take part in fixing it already,and it had been no walk in the park. Just cries of pain she wished she could've gotten out of her mind.

"What have you done?"

"I thought I could make it better"

Red crossed the distance between them and brought her hands to the girl's face.

"It hurts"added Piper crying.

The edges of the scar were bleeding were Piper had tried to cut,and they were angry red again.

She had no gauze so she grabbed her towel and tied it tightly around the fresh injury.

"I tried to peel it off. I always screw up everything.I can fix it. See?"

The only thing she could see was the blood she was sitting on,and the tears she was so hardly trying to hide from the younger girl,and were mirroring Piper's. She could've flipped out. She could've given Chapman a piece of her mind. Scolded her like a little kid,or starved her again at lunch for a day for being so stupid. For even thinking about something like that. But she didn't. Instead she hugged Piper to her chest,sitting on the blood well past her caring.

"You're not a screw up,you do things sometimes,have me and everybody around going crazy and make mistakes. We all do. But you shall never hide this from family. We help each other. This is what we're family for. This is what family is for."

"I just wanted to…make it ok"

"I know. But it's done. You said it. It's there,it is a matter of what you want it to be. You can still let it be a Swastika,and you'll forever be branded and let it defy you and all of this will have been for nothing or you can let it be a Window of new chances,and you can rise up your head and carry on"

"It's too bright and hot in here"

"Lights are on honey and you're panicking"

"Yeah,I..I t-think I am"

Her breathing was coming out labored,and her head was pounding the more tears she shed.

Red run her hands over Piper's arms and started rocking her.

"Shh. You're gonna be fine. This is not gonna kill you and you know that. You'll be ok."

She lost count of how many times she repeated the mantra,before she could feel the younger girl trembling under her,slowly breaking down again in front of her,but never stopped holding her,letting her know she was there. Red saw her crying her heart out for the third time in less than 12 hours,and it was quite a bit before she could tell from her face that the younger girl was falling asleep and had finally calmed down.

Since they had become bunkmates they had really gotten to know each other. Chapman had truly become part of the family and Red had learned to read her out like an open book,something she had been grateful for after months of the girl being a totally closed book to her.

"I'm tired"Red nodded and let the girl lean on the wall.

She tried to clean things up as much as she could and changed into her clothes for the day,then came back to a sleeping Piper. She checked her out and knew the feverish heat of the attack had gone down. She lowered the old bandage on it again from it's clean side,and vowed to find a new one as soon as she could.

That girl would've been more the death of her than she could've ever imagined. She tried to change her into her spare clothes,not without quite an effort, trying to not create such a big commotion,then let the girl's head rest on her shoulder again.

The Suburbs would've come to life in a couple of hours. Inmates would've skipped out of their cubes,some laughing,some mulling over something,somebody complaining cause it was too soon to have breakfast,again she would've been in the kitchen working her way through that morning. But as of now she was sitting on the bathroom's floor by Piper's side and was surer than before to know more now about her than she had ever had,ever since her first day in Litchfield. She had figured sometimes she could be too straightforward,stubborn and come off as constantly trying to find her path and screwing it up,which had earned several raised eyebrows and something more from her as she could recall,but Red knew what lay under. A caring girl,who could doubt yes,but knew how to fight for the right thing.A girl who could love for real,like she loved Alex,and who could screw up,again,but always try to fix it. Something she knew all too well. Truth was Red cared for her,more than she had ever thought possible. More than she would've admitted to in the past. For she would learn from the events and come out better. The girls she had taken under her wing as her own had somehow always striked her for who they were,way more than their character. And they could be troubled sometimes,or most of them anyway,but they were themselves,and she loved them for that. Piper had revealed herself to her bit by bit,wiggled herself into her heart,making her wish to never witness such a thing ever again. The kid had already been punished by others and herself enough. All this had happened,no use in duelling over it and she should've kept her from it,but as it had happened Red could only hope they would come better out of it too,stronger than before. Mistakes you could learn quite a lot from. As she always thought,sometimes you had to hit rock bottom to come back up. It was the way of life.

"I'll tell you something Piper Chapman,even if you're sleeping on my shoulder right now,and I'm pretty sure I'm gonna get a backache in the morning,and you won't hear me. You're not alone. You'll never be. Sometimes you get things wrong,but you try so hard to fix them. You want to live,and you wanna do right by yourself and the others,and I'm willing to bet on you…."

 **Author's note:Here I am trying out for an OITNB fic for the first time. I really wanted to focus on how Pipes has truly come to be part of the family,and write something after having been left with lots of emotions going by episodes 4x07 and 4x08.I'm positively in love with the series and waiting for S5. Till the next time. xoxoThetimeinbetween.**


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